Friday, March 29, 2002 9:50
Weather: Cool and sunny
Location: La Suiza coffee shop, Plaza de Santa Ana, Madrid

I´m enjoying a distinctly un-Lenten pan chocolat, oozing with dark chocolate and covered with slivered almonds, with a fresh orange juice and cafe con leche on the side. La Suiza is basically right outside the hostal where we´ll be staying for the weekend, so I suspect I´ll be in here on a daily basis.

The train brought me to Atocha station on schedule at 9:05 last night. I had a blurry memory from the first time through Madrid that the Metro had been easy to use, and indeed it proved itself again: the automated ticket machines even speak English!

The Plaza de Santa Ana, where the hostal is situated, is at the centre of a trendy area, and there were crowds of people in the street. The hostal´s discrete signage was a bit hard to find, but it turned up tucked in the northwestern corner, next to the massive Hotel La Reina Victoria. The first impressions weren´t promising: the outside door led into a dimly lit corridor leading to a creaking old staircase with an extremely shabby carpet. Up a couple of flights the staircase wasn´t lit at all, and briefly walked up in pitch darkness until I worked out that the little glowing lights were on timer switches for the main lights.

The main who let me in looked a bit uncertain that there were in fact rooms, and I had a brief vision of trekking door to door through the many hostels of the neighbourhood, but a quick check with his wife and I was shown to a clean, but small single room next to the shared bathroom.

After a good night´s sleep, everything started looking up. I got up, had a hot shower (although at one point the water briefly cut out, leaving me with my hair full of shampoo) and prepared to set out.

First priority was making sure Paul, Patrick and Kelly have a place to stay. I wrote out arrival and departure days, and with many visual aids, a few words of Spanglish, and about 20 minutes, managed to communicate the details to my hosts. They were able to offer a double to add to the single I´m in, starting tonight, and another double on Monday, so we´re all set.

Second priority is laundry: today´s my last day in clean clothes otherwise. I found the local laundromat easily enough, but it, as with most of the other shops, is shut tight for Good Friday. I guess I´m back to washing my own clothes again.
posted by Tom at 6:25 AM | link |